Cheese HAACP Training Offered in VT

The Vermont Cheese Council will hold a two day Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) training for cheesemakers and cheesemaking operations.

Dates: Wednesdays, October 6 and 13, 2010
Time: 9:30am-4pm
Location: Provisions International, 42 North Main Street in White River Junction
Cost: $100 ($50/day)
To register: email Rachel Fritz Schaal or call 866.261.8595

Participants will:
Develop a HACCP plan from milk though packaged cheese
Conduct a hazard analysis
Identify Critical Control Points (CCPs) and set critical limits
Monitor CCPs and establish appropriate corrective actions
Validate your CCPs and verify your HACCP plan

Accredited by the International HACCP Alliance, the course will teach you how to
develop, implement and manage a Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP)
plan for your cheese making operation. Everyone who completes the course will be
certified to develop a HACCP plan for their farm or for another farm.

Course instructor, SCOTT DONNELLY, Ph.D. is a product safety authority with
over two decades of food industry experience. His areas of expertise include food
microbiology, foodborne illness investigations, laboratory operations, analytical method
development, and HACCP.

Spaces in the course are limited to 20 people. Thanks to generous support from NE SARE, we are able to offer this training at a greatly reduced rate. Please sign up ASAP to assure your place.

WHY TAKE A HACCP COURSE NOW?

Each year, an estimated one in four Americans will get sick from tainted food and about
5,000 will die (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)…so far NONE from cheese
made by Vermont cheese makers.

However in response to growing concerns over foodborne illnesses (like the recent
egg recall), the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510) is under consideration
by the Senate, following passage of similar legislation by the House last year. The
main goal of the legislation is to enhance the authority and resources of the FDA
to monitor and prevent foodborne illness outbreaks. While amendments have been
proposed that would exempt small and direct marketing farmers from some sections
of the bill requiring hazard analysis planning and prevention systems, the future is
clear: whether from the federal government or from distributors, HACCP based
food safely risk management planning and documentation is a coming reality.

The Vermont Cheese Council has been following these developments for some time
now, encouraging cheesemakers to be pro-active in assuring food safety in their
operations and supporting risk management education as part of VIAC’s Cheesemakers
Certification programs. Develolpment of HACCP plans and related monitoring
and verification so that the producers best food safety practices are documented will benefit cheesemakers (fewer lost batches and improved quality), distributors and consumers (assurance of safety controls), and Vermont’s growing cheese industry
(our first class image).

Offering this course now will help cheese makers in the state who have not taken a
HACCP course make the transition to the HACCP based food safety at a VERY REDUCED CHARGE—
a valuable certification for marketing to distributors, restaurants, retailers and consumers.

The Seminar will also include presentations on a study of wholesale cheese
buyers views of risk management in farmstead cheese making, as well as a two year pilot
program that trained twenty Northeastern farmstead cheesemakers on best practices for doing cheese risk management planning,
sampling and monitoring their cheese production on small farms.

Joining VCC as program sponsors are the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program and the Cooperative Development Institute.